Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill A Member Op The Illinois Legislature Other activities engaged the attention of Thomas Cox in the intervals of the war period when he was not engaged in military duties. His father lost his life by drowning some time during the War of 1812. He was crossing a swollen stream on horseback, and, upon the advice of a companion, took his feet out of the stirrups, with the result that he was swept from his seat in midstream.30 Thomas was the oldest son, and in him family ties were very strong. His widowed mother and his sisters and brother were throughout life objects of his tenderest care and solicitude — in all his changes of residence they "ere either part of his family or his near neighbors. It was about the time of the war that Thomas Cox began to put into practice his studies in land surveying. Some work in that profession led him to the west side of the Mississippi, in southeastern Missouriand northeastern Arkansas, where he explored the strangely altered country about New Madrid. The great earthquake of 1811 which depressed large areas in that panhandle of Missouri and formed lakes and swamps over what was previously dry land had also been severely felt around his home at Kaskaskia. The ancient French village of Ste. Gene- vieve, just across the Mississippi, proved to be an attractive place for the young soldier to visit. After the Louisiana Purchase had transferred the west side of the Mississippi to American control Ste. Genevieve became for some time an important political center. George W. Jones, a young Kentucky graduate of Transylvania University, went there and began a public career that led to the United States Senate after he had become an Iowa pioneer. Henry Dodge, who became successively General, Governor, and United States Senator in Wisconsin, was like...